More Apple Watch Rants
I must come off as the biggest Apple hater. I'm really not. There are indeed a lot of great things to be said of Apple, their products and to some degree their methodology. But, that being said, the Apple of today is not the same Apple that got big with iPods. And this isn't about the departure of Steve Jobs. In fact, a lot of what has changed (in my opinion) for the worst happened or began while Jobs was still at Apple.
For instance, while I'm not a huge fan of Apple's proprietary nature, planned obsolescence had some terrific side effects. And that is dead at Apple. People don't notice this because they think releasing a new model of iPhone or iPad is the same thing. IT ISN'T. Not only that, but they even killed it off holistically, because what Apple does now is both continues to manufacture and sell last years model (and some time two year old models) in attempt to break into a slightly less expensive market.
True planned obsolescence, the kind which Apple was originally famous for in their devices, was making the last gen model COMPLETELY obsolete. New models would be wildly different, they wouldn't run the same OS often, if there were apps they weren't compatible. And so on. Why is that so great? Well, it allowed Apple to be more rapidly innovative. They weren't concerned with backwards compatibility or even building a device which resembled the prior model. This meant if something could be done better, they simply did it.
Now however, as they became popular they needed to worry about maintaining existing customers, and that meant not deprecating the software out of existence or wildly changing product designs. It also meant that they didn't need to stop producing older models. Funny, sounds more like Microsoft than Apple of old. And, as I mentioned, this transformation happened fully under Steve Jobs.
I'm not sure what happened internally at Apple over the period since their golden days of innovation. Maybe the innovative engineers left, and maybe they simply allowed their brains to adapt to the new cadence of things. But Apple hasn't been innovative in years now. And even the things they try and pass off as innovative are neither as comparatively good as they were in the past or delivered well either. The iPad Mini for instance was just a smaller iPad, so no innovation there and it was a product which eroded their bottom line, so not well delivered either. Apple Pay so far is a total disaster.
And that brings us up to the Apple Watch. I know I keep ranting about this one. But the internet won't shut up about it, and so I can't keep it off my mind either. Today's thoughts once again revert back to the battery life. But this time the complaint is comparative. To the original iPad.
When the original iPad came out, Steve Jobs waxed poetic about the battery life in this device. And it was no accident. It wasn't that things simply worked out great. They should a massive battery in that damn thing. It cost money. Battery life was not only highly advertised and touted, it was quite obviously a design decision. And that is interesting. My iPad spent most of its time at home near a power outlet. It spent the bulk of the day unused near a power outlet even. The 8-10hrs of battery life was indeed useful for extended stays at a café. But at work I have electrical outlets, in my car I have car chargers. My iPad would last 8-10hrs in use, heavy use at that, and several WEEKS idle.
So, here is the comparison. If it is THAT important to make a device that spends more time idle near a power supply or in use near a power supply than it does away from a power supply how important do you think battery life is a device which should spend almost every waking moment on your wrist?
Comparatively speaking, it is a no-brainer. I still have chargers in my home, office and in my car, but having my wrist tethered to an outlet isn't acceptable in any of those places, and needing to take off a watch in any of those environments defeats the purpose of owning a watch as opposed to say, a desk clock. The ONLY time it is acceptable for me to charge a watch is overnight. Given that there is only one such time period long enough to get the job done the battery life needs to be "forgiving". I won't always remember to charge my devices. Or I may remember, but at a time when it is inconvenient.
Simply speaking, the reported life of the Apple Watch makes it such a device that you need to adapt your life around it.
I don't know where all of the power is being drained. But I'm sure after it is released someone will do a teardown and try and figure out which components are killing it. But I would be surprised if the SoC isn't largely to blame. And this has to be the most boneheaded thing about the product (next to the absurd screen resolution). You see, under any serious amount of use, reports say it only gets about 4 hours of battery life. Not even a full work day.
So why drop what people are reporting as effectively an iPhone 4S proc in a device you're not actually intended to make of if you want it to last? That is loony. And it isn't like Apple doesn't have the intellect, buying power or contacts to get the best batteries in the market. If this is what they are able to pull off today, it is several years off still before we see a viable Apple Watch for the sane every day user. This is like dropping a Corvette engine in a car with a 5L gas tank. It'll drive you in style, as long as you only want to drive down the road and back.
To make matters worse, no one has ever thrown that much CPU and GPU power into a wearable device before. In other words, there is absolutely no proof that there is even a market for it. So, not only do they not know if there is a market or how big it is. We already know it is a terrible product. The people who want smart watches that don't care about having an iPhone 4S proc's power on their wrist will laugh and buy just about anything else first. And the cost is just too high. I don't even really see droves of the Apple fans buying these things. As usual, I could be wrong. But most people I know don't even wear watches to begin with.
For instance, while I'm not a huge fan of Apple's proprietary nature, planned obsolescence had some terrific side effects. And that is dead at Apple. People don't notice this because they think releasing a new model of iPhone or iPad is the same thing. IT ISN'T. Not only that, but they even killed it off holistically, because what Apple does now is both continues to manufacture and sell last years model (and some time two year old models) in attempt to break into a slightly less expensive market.
True planned obsolescence, the kind which Apple was originally famous for in their devices, was making the last gen model COMPLETELY obsolete. New models would be wildly different, they wouldn't run the same OS often, if there were apps they weren't compatible. And so on. Why is that so great? Well, it allowed Apple to be more rapidly innovative. They weren't concerned with backwards compatibility or even building a device which resembled the prior model. This meant if something could be done better, they simply did it.
Now however, as they became popular they needed to worry about maintaining existing customers, and that meant not deprecating the software out of existence or wildly changing product designs. It also meant that they didn't need to stop producing older models. Funny, sounds more like Microsoft than Apple of old. And, as I mentioned, this transformation happened fully under Steve Jobs.
I'm not sure what happened internally at Apple over the period since their golden days of innovation. Maybe the innovative engineers left, and maybe they simply allowed their brains to adapt to the new cadence of things. But Apple hasn't been innovative in years now. And even the things they try and pass off as innovative are neither as comparatively good as they were in the past or delivered well either. The iPad Mini for instance was just a smaller iPad, so no innovation there and it was a product which eroded their bottom line, so not well delivered either. Apple Pay so far is a total disaster.
And that brings us up to the Apple Watch. I know I keep ranting about this one. But the internet won't shut up about it, and so I can't keep it off my mind either. Today's thoughts once again revert back to the battery life. But this time the complaint is comparative. To the original iPad.
When the original iPad came out, Steve Jobs waxed poetic about the battery life in this device. And it was no accident. It wasn't that things simply worked out great. They should a massive battery in that damn thing. It cost money. Battery life was not only highly advertised and touted, it was quite obviously a design decision. And that is interesting. My iPad spent most of its time at home near a power outlet. It spent the bulk of the day unused near a power outlet even. The 8-10hrs of battery life was indeed useful for extended stays at a café. But at work I have electrical outlets, in my car I have car chargers. My iPad would last 8-10hrs in use, heavy use at that, and several WEEKS idle.
So, here is the comparison. If it is THAT important to make a device that spends more time idle near a power supply or in use near a power supply than it does away from a power supply how important do you think battery life is a device which should spend almost every waking moment on your wrist?
Comparatively speaking, it is a no-brainer. I still have chargers in my home, office and in my car, but having my wrist tethered to an outlet isn't acceptable in any of those places, and needing to take off a watch in any of those environments defeats the purpose of owning a watch as opposed to say, a desk clock. The ONLY time it is acceptable for me to charge a watch is overnight. Given that there is only one such time period long enough to get the job done the battery life needs to be "forgiving". I won't always remember to charge my devices. Or I may remember, but at a time when it is inconvenient.
Simply speaking, the reported life of the Apple Watch makes it such a device that you need to adapt your life around it.
I don't know where all of the power is being drained. But I'm sure after it is released someone will do a teardown and try and figure out which components are killing it. But I would be surprised if the SoC isn't largely to blame. And this has to be the most boneheaded thing about the product (next to the absurd screen resolution). You see, under any serious amount of use, reports say it only gets about 4 hours of battery life. Not even a full work day.
So why drop what people are reporting as effectively an iPhone 4S proc in a device you're not actually intended to make of if you want it to last? That is loony. And it isn't like Apple doesn't have the intellect, buying power or contacts to get the best batteries in the market. If this is what they are able to pull off today, it is several years off still before we see a viable Apple Watch for the sane every day user. This is like dropping a Corvette engine in a car with a 5L gas tank. It'll drive you in style, as long as you only want to drive down the road and back.
To make matters worse, no one has ever thrown that much CPU and GPU power into a wearable device before. In other words, there is absolutely no proof that there is even a market for it. So, not only do they not know if there is a market or how big it is. We already know it is a terrible product. The people who want smart watches that don't care about having an iPhone 4S proc's power on their wrist will laugh and buy just about anything else first. And the cost is just too high. I don't even really see droves of the Apple fans buying these things. As usual, I could be wrong. But most people I know don't even wear watches to begin with.
Comments
Post a Comment